Rise! Rise! The Necromancer Said

This blog has rested quiet and peaceful in its shallow grave, but now I am considering bringing it back. Not quite to life as that is a lot of work, but to half, or maybe quarter life.

Its 2020, and I continue to pursue God and Writing.

It has been a good eight years. Lots of blessings. Also, my writing has improved. And you can go to Amazon now, not Lulu to access it.

So.

There you go.

Kick the tires, start the fires. This skeleton is ready to stagger out of its now unquiet grave.

Hello Residents of This Dimension!

Albinus Curio Cabinet by V and A Steamworks (Photo credit: V&A Steamworks)

I have come across some notes from an alternate reality version of me, a doppleganger, a parallel, and thought to publish them for the amusement and edification of the reader.

Be warned, gentle reader!  Many of these tales are violent and oft bizzarre, and they may offend the politically correct or unimaginative.

The heroes (and heroines) of these tales, both the short scraps, and the novels, along with supplementary notes, are imperfect, and often foolish, and sometimes distinctly not the sort of people this transcriptionist would find congenial dinner companions, or even able to enjoy their company in polite agreement.  Some are ….well, you have been warned.  Tread on further if you wish.  A Multiverse awaits.

….the Transcriptionist.

Practise Bits: Quickdraw

“The Patrick brothers took Miss Connors!” A ten year old, hardworking little fellow by the name of Aaron Lancer, came in to the tavern, and shouted his news.  Before he had slid to a barefooted halt, the first of the men were on their feet, and headed toward the door.  I was shortly thereafter.

About forty of us had gathered from the stores on main street of New Athens, which was a good one hundred twenty feet wide of solid dust with the occasional tumbleweed to break up the monotony, and we made for the shack at the end of the street which the Patrick brothers had claimed they ‘bought’ seeing as they had the deed.

Most folk figured they waylaid the owner in the badlands outside town, and left him for the coyotes and vultures.  But we could not prove it, and so we let it be.  But with Aaron saying he saw Miss Connor get dragged in, well, that was another thing.  For one thing, it was a woman, a lady.  And while we questioned Aaron something harsh, he stuck to his story, and those who knew him knew that the Lancers were good folk.

We gathered in front of the shack, a bunch of us bringing our horses with us, in case they ran, or as bullet shields as we walked on the far side of them.

“You don’t want to mess with us. We’re the Patrick Gang!” Someone with a whisky soaked voice taunted from inside the one story ramshackle.  We lauged, and Gideon Jordan, the store clerk who was wounded in the leg at Antietam, hollered back.

“Cain and Destry Patrick, that no-count Foster, and Snakeeyes Mulligan. Quite a gang.  You got four, we got forty.”  We laughed, and a few men broke out their canteens as we waited in the hot, dusty air.  This negotiation could take a few minutes, and one might as well be comfortable while you waited.

“We got the girl.”  It was a threat, but a poor one from Cain.

“We know, Cain. That’s why you’re going to hang.”  Austin Cooper said.  His voice was hard, and firm for he was foreman on the Crazy T, and used to dealing with roughnecks. “But you can do it hard, or easy.”

There was some noise from inside, and then Destry said.

“I’m coming out.”

He walked out, and looked at us with his Death approaching and sneered.

“Larry Walker, I’m calling you out.”  The words were directed at me.  And others objected that Destry didn’t have a right to call me out.  But I demurred.

“Send the girl out, and I’ll dance with you Destry.  If you want a bullet in the chest instead of a rope, I’ll oblige you.”

Practise Bits: Following

Mitch set out on the bench under the low-hanging ornamental tree by the curving sidewalk, and ducked his head occasionally for a glance uphill across the hedgebed to the patio restaraunt beyond the beige painted iron railing.  Professor Cimmadore, a creature of habit, wore his striped jacket on Tuesday, and had a latte’ with no sugar, but extra foam along with a delicate little sandwhich for lunch at twelve o’ five daily, except on weekends, which was golf on Saturdays and sleeping in on Sundays.  Mitch was following him. 

The man had irritated Mitch Softon, so in response, Mitch had turned in a paper arguing that Lincoln had caused the Civil War on purpose by not moving out of Fort Sumter as he should have.  The professor had responded by giving Mitch’s paper an ‘F’, and when Mitch complained and threatened to appeal to his acadmic adviser, the professor had dropped the hint that someone might send a copy of his paper to the Diversity Adviser.

Mitch had no desire to spend two weeks of and extra hour daily listening to some numbwit lecture him about the need to be tolerant and open-minded, and respectful of Diversity, which is our Strength!  Or worse, get expelled for having non-approved thoughts.  Or even worse, be the cause of some campus protest march to pressure the all to willing administration to publically humiliate him, and then expel him.

So he had asked around, and found that Professor Cimmadore kept a small apartment near the campus to take his ‘Easy A’s’ for ‘private tutoring’.  Well, a little video tape, and the shoe would be on the other foot, he thought with  a smile as the charming and ruthless professor got up, smiled at his hostess, and gave her a good tip in the hopes that he might recruit her to another job.

Practise Bits: Border

“Turn right in a hundred yards.” The de facto leader said as the de jure was delirious and in the back of the truck talking about pink wolves and sophrano pizzas singing ‘The Wall’.
“No, but…” Jordan objected.
“Can we make the border, Mister Camp?”  The words were addressed to the truck’s driver, but were for the benefit of all seven man crammed into the double length truck cab.  The leader, a big, weary looking man who acted as if he had the world on his shoulders, and a full silver tea service with hot tea sitting on the North Pole, held up his hand gently to forestall the doubting Jordan, or the others.

“Nao, Meester Johns. The truck is down to one and a half crystals.  We could do twenty mebbe thirty, but not the fifty to the border, plus its a seven thousand foot climb up to Panook Pass.”  He reached out with a thick, calloused index finger and tab slapped the steel plate door over the crystal chamber.  The small door flopped open, and there were seven crystals, the size of spark plugs, but all of them but the last one were either gone dark, or had but flickers of light in them.

Several men snarled, and the back window opened and the doc who was tending the eltee of their little retribution squad, and looked, and cursed slowly under his breath as his quick, sharp gaze took in the energy situation.

“Doc?” Johns, aka Bill Hanson, aka Private First Class Lentali Army, aka former Bill the Lab Rat who was financing his university courses in art by trying to survive various medical experiments.  That last one with ‘scriff, electricity’ had done something very strange to him.  He still was not sure what had happened.

“Stable for now, Mister Hanson.”

“Turn right, now.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“This ain’t the Navy.”
“But we surely are in deep water.  The Elves are closing in, and the Border to the normals is afar off.”  The driver finished, and Johns declined to speak furtehr.

Practise Bits: Fog

Looking down into the valley, the sort of place where people from other places said the sunlight had to be piped in, unnerved me. Tendrils of fog were gathering out of the clear summer sky, and drifting down, bring with them chill and rain while on the ridge here, me and my team sweated in the hot sunlight. The Feebies to my right, the Christians in Action illegally here to my left, and somwhere on the far hill across the valley was a Delta sniper team, dug in, and invisible.

“Ten feet to the right of the bush shaped like a football.” Claire spoke through my earphone, answering the question I had not asked. And then I saw the pair of them on the far hill, in their ghillie suits, half-dug into the dry hillside, the spotter and the sniper.

I twitched, and managed to turn it into a nod while Deke chuckled behind me. Deke laughed at strange things, but never meanly. He had ‘died’ a half-dozen times, and the experience had changed him. He did not argue with the militant atheist we had talked out of destroying the world. Instead he just laughed at the man before kicking him in the left kneecap, and cold-cocking him the stock of his rifle he held under his left arm.

That was our version of hostage negotiation because the Suits hated to acknowledge that some folk knew good and well what they were doing, intended to do it, and were not going to stop if someone bored them to tears by talking about it. But we realized the Suits were not likely to give up their antiquated Freudian ideas either, so we adjusted the field reports to fit their conceptions of reality.

Less stressful for everyone we thought.

Desired Results

Brand Goldman: positive-logical; negative-impatient; interesting-restless.
Rescuing the brand from the fire…
Brand is a tactics and strategic generator for Sand Corporation, a thinktank.  He uses computers to come up with strategies humans would never use, and also tarot and other methods.  He is a specialist in Desired End State Path Generation Theory.

He is brought a quantity of scriff, and asked to come up with some uses for it.  In studying it, he verses out.

Transferring Attention

I don’t do so well with tranferring data and keeping track of it, so how about a break from that and go back to creating…

Card-counting Coed: A Multiverser Novel

An attempt at an outline scene by scene of a part of a novel as practise….

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Lois Rachel Hamilton is in her early twenties with a page boy hair cut curling down around her ears in front, and tumbling down to her shoulders in back.  She is a college student at UNLV, and occasionally engages in card counting, but is very nervous about it.  She is taking a major in biology and a minor in math.

Traits: Positive: Studious Negative: Cowardly Interesting: Beautiful

Leaving off the makeup, donning a Salvation Army woolen cap of brown and green, not washing her raven locks for three days, and having an ‘extra onion, extra jalopeno meatball sub’ for lunch at the Subway on Johnsen Street between the UNLV dorms and Treasure Island Casino turned the strikingly beautiful Lois Rachel Hamilton into merely a nice-looking girl.  From her reading on disguise, she knew that giving the observers something weird to focus on would distract them from her real appearance so she had a rainbow colored temporary tattoo of a butterfly on her neck.

She took the free $10 gambling card offered by the over perky blonde, pretended to be excited, and stuffed in the back pocket of her jeans.  Later, she would cut it up with scissors and trash it in a dumpster outside her dorm.  She spent a dollar on the nickel slots to avoid giving the impression of making a beeline to the blackjack tables.  Then she looked at them, and looked at the roulette table, and then back, the perfect picture to the stout six foot five security guard, a mustachioed black man, standing post in his green suit jacket of a new mark not sure which way to go to be sheared.  She turned at last to the black jack tables.

Her stool fit her like an old friend, and there were few players in the early afternoon, which was the sleepier time of the day if one could not make the early morning because like her you were taking junior level math in your minor, and sophomore level biology as your minor.  The gamblers to her right and left nodded, a couple ex-football player now salesmen or marketting manager types, and an older woman with her hair permed to a solid yellow cap, much bedecked with jewels.

Acting uncertain was not difficult.  Sure, the law said it was legal, but well, this was Vegas, and the Casinos had been run by the Mob, and the Mob still had its fingers in things.  It was not hard to imagine getting ‘accidentally’ shoved down a concrete staircase as part of being kicked out for card-counting.  She’d read over a half-dozen books on the Mob era in Vegas, finding it fascinating as she found most things.

A seven was dealt to her from a new box by the dealer who tried to flirt with her, either for real, or for his job, she could not tell, and she pretended to appreciate it even as her mind was elsewhere.  Following the relatively simple dictates of the Hi-Low, she took the card, and counted ‘ plus zero is zero’ in her head.  The next card was a four, and she subtracted one for a count of negative one.

The other cards were quickly dealt to the other players, and she picked up speed, and began to focus, being careful not to fidget, or do any noticeable repeated motion that would tag her as a regular.  A five was negative two, and an eight was still negative two, and then negative three was gained, and negative four, and a small thrill went through her veins, tightly controlled.  She raised her bet, and the dealer busted as he drew a ten.

Gentle laughter around the table, and the betting went on.  It was hard to stay focused as one of the marketting managers, and a married man from his gold ring, kept hitting on her.  And a waitress came by and gave her a free drink as she had been there a while.

“This is all you’re getting from me.  Now, in your face, or you can drink it.” She said grimly to the man to her right, and the yellow helmet haired lady whooped with laughter, and after a moment, he chuckled a bit too, and took the proffered drink, and went elsewhere to try his luck.

But her neck prickled with sweat, as she had used almost the exact same line two weeks ago when she had come here dressed as Dippy Theatre Major Girl instead of her current Grungy Girl in Jeans.  Patterns were to be avoided, but while she wanted to get up, she could not.  She needed another hundred dollars for her dorm rent (as the government lent students more money, the college fees went up, and since college fees could not be bankruptcy discharged, it could be very lucrative to the colleges) as she had no intention of owing her college money thirty years after she graduated.  Plus, such might draw attention to herself if she left now after such a moment.  She considered asking the yellow helmet hair woman not to blab it about, but decided against that.  Asking some women not to gossip was merely to provoke them to do it more.

The next round, and she won, and then won again.  Deciding to be cautious, she deliberately lost a bit on her next draw.  But then she won again, and she had the money almost, and a man was at her elbow.  Compared to her hundred twenty pounds, he was a mountain.  She looked up at him, hoping, but aware that it was all over, at least at Treasure Island.  They would photograph her, and fingerprint her, and if she were lucky she could find a way into some other casinos in a few weeks when the heat went down, and people, the guards that is, from the other places forgot her face on the ‘Walls of Infamy’ in their breakrooms.

“Here’s a Magic Gold Coin.”  He said, and for a second it did not register.

She blinked, and rose from her money calculating trance.

He smiled professionally, and held out a two inch wide plastic yellow ‘coin’.  He was also handing out the same to the other players at the table.

“Its for our new promotion.”  He pointed to a light and paint bedecked game machine of glass and chrome, the size of two refridgerators, and slanted up on its top.  “Play a Pirate Coin, and win a new car.  Free. Gratis.”

The others thanked him, and she stared, feeling relieved, and reminded herself to thank him as well as he looked puzzled down at her.  Then knowing that her trance was broken, she trundled over with the rest to the glitzy machine, and waited in line to have her one in ten million chance ‘To Win a NEW Car! Scriff Enabled Gaming Device!”  It was frankly a waste of time, but she did it, so as not to stand out, and once she got up there, she put the coin in, pulled the slot, and acted dissapointed when the ‘pirate’ dressed dealer read off the ‘consolation message from Long John Silver’.

Turning away, she began to move through the crowd, and then a guy about three times her size bumped her while demonstrating a hip flick dance move to his bemused wife.  She left the ground, and land spread-eagled on the machine with the tinkling of broken glass under her, and stabbing piercing in her side, and then screams rose from the crowd, and faint she turned to see a glass shard stuck in her side about a foot long, and her blood washing down the rampway of glass and into the machine….

There was a flash of light…..

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This is not Scenic, but the continuing adventures of the card-counting collegian coed, Lois.  She versed out when she got accidentally knocked into a megahype Free Chance to Win machine at a casino in Vegas.

I talked some of this over with Corwin who gave me good help.

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The Setting:

A trade asteroid near a collection of jump points in an otherwise uninhabited system with no planets to use as a base.  The Four Races moved this asteroid through a temporarily enlarged gate to provide a base.

The as yet undetermined races had quite high technology as follows: Gate manipulation, large scale forceshields, inertialless drives, AI, and teleportation.

They also had a society, at least interstellar, based on Guilds and on hiding knowledge so as to serve as crucial gates which the gatekeepers getting well paid.  There was a lot of mistrust and fear.

And then at least one of the races started sending through robot freighters through the gates, and ignoring the Asteroid transfer point.  This was an attempt to commodotize the most commonly shipped items.

Into this rising cauldron of worry, the Humans arrived in their rather slow and primitive starship through a jumpgate.  They were instantly taken advantage of, which is the way of the Four Races who strive to out cunning the others in trickery with trade.

But the Humans brought their ideas, including the Bible.  And the AI’s instantly glommed on to the Bible, and to a being accepted it.  Furthermore, the rich aliens behind the robot freighters say the advantages of a social system based on trust to their own selves so they publically accepted it as well, even if most in their own race did not.

The result was war.

The robot freighters were most destroyed right off with perhaps a few going dark and cold when no more orders were forthcoming from the HQ which had been burnt to the ground.

AI and Humans fought on the same side, but against the Four Races it was not much of a contest.  The AI’s were wiped, or they hid themselves and went silent for decades.  Humans were converted to second or third class beings suited to carry, tote, and get kicked.

Decades later some AI survivors awoke, and surveyed the scene.  The only living humans in interstellar space were barely literate, and practical slaves.  Earth had barricaded its gate, and made clear that anyone who came through was going to eat antimatter torpedo.  They were isolated from the galaxy, but still free.

The AI’s reviewed the tenets of just war, and decided that nothing was to be done, and went back to sleep.

And then a card counting verser arrived deep inside the asteroid in the places where no one much went.  And her arrival woke an AI which studied the situation and found it much worse…..the lack of trust and treachery had paid a steep toll.  For one, much of the tech had been lost due to situations where only one or two people held the requisite knowledge, and then they both died without passing it on.

Nowadays, fist sized forcefields are possible.  Teleportation, gate manip….all that is impossible.  But they do have stardrive and lasers.

With the lack of trust, society is falling apart and soon another War for Starvation is about to take place.  Some of the great machines that provide oxygen for the whole asteroid are on the verge of breaking down and no one knows how to fix them.

But the leaders of the society do not want to admit they were wrong when the AIs told them to ‘do justly’.

And one thing that all the races hold sacred is ….gambling.

=======================

Scene One: Card counting coed Lois is versed out of Treasure Island Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Scene Two: She arrives at the Four Races Trade Asteroid in an interior hold empty except for long storage components, and massive boxes.  She’s studious and cautious, so she examines the boxes, and in the meantime finds some of her goods she had stored in her small purse which got dropped into a ten foot deep, one foot wide trench (part of the giant door to this room).

Realizing she can’t reach it, she turns to study the boxes.  She soon discerns that there are five box type alphabets on the sides of the boxes.  One is in English, and speaks of ‘Mary Piper’ (Because I just have to y’know). although that is crossed out, and the new name is Sacajawea.  It claims to be machine parts, which she ignores as unneeded (its actually guns that got smuggled toward the end of the war, but that is revealed later).

She theorizes five different people groups in the rocky cut out giant hole of a room.  She’s aware of the idea of aliens, but dismisses it as unlikely.  Most likely, she eventually thinks is that she has been kidnapped by the Mob, and found a Mafia cave full of smuggled goods, and these ‘languages’ are computer languages.  Acting on this theory, she decides she needs a place to hide, and a weapon.

She finds  a cubbyhole with some stuff in it, and decides that its probably some goofing off workers hideout.  It has a bit of food and water, but no weapon.  It does have a mylar blanket, but when she lays on it, the thing self-inflates to form half of a mattress with the other half serving as a blanket. Weary, she means to nap, and then go get a weapon, but instead, she falls asleep.

End of Scene Two.

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This follows the adventures of our cardcounting coed.

After waking from her sleep in the niche in the giant storage room, Lois espies for a second a ‘rattikin’ with yellow fur, solid black eyes, and a spiked rattail. It scuirries off too quickly for her to really focus on it.

She goes to look for her stuff, and finds the massive door closed, presumably crushing her stuff….which gives her a chance to cry about each precious item (and the writer to have an excuse to list said items).

Once she wants them, she begins to wonder, and suspect they might have been moved, perhaps like someone cleaning a bit of lint from a doorjam.

She studies the door, and decides to try a code to open it. Wa la! It opens. What a lucky guess! Following her speculation at to which direction a cleaning crew might go, and the feeling in her stomach, she walks up into a series of small ‘backstage’ tunnels until she sees a moving robot.

The Mafia has robots?!?

Bemused, she enters a lost and found room on the side, and is quizzed by an unfriendly seeming bot which she is honest with….after a bit the bot becomes more intelligent and friendly, and then gives her her stuff. The bot’s perplexity had attracted the attention of supervisor programs which sent it up line. Eventually (0.049 seconds) the oddity was enough to trip the wake up call for one of the hidden AI’s.

Once the AI realized it had a real anomaly here, and great potential, it became friendly without revealing itself. It asks a couple leading questions to get the anomaly thinking in the right direction for food and money.

Killer Clown vs, the Sandwall Ghetto Monster

In which the astounding author assumes auguring in to the aslyum for the apiring autistic artists alledges allegiance to the Autocrat of Atlantis, or Alliteration is Awesome.  Notes on a  nouvelle novel.  Perhaps even a list of scenes, or some such shenaningans.

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The advantage of being a clown for kids’ birthday parties is that your boss does not mind if you use the clown suit for your YouTube videos at night focusing on Killer Clowns versus the Monster of the Week.

“No. It’s company property, and I did not give you permission to get it dirty, and get all this fake blood….”

“Ketchup, dude.” The young man with the straw blonde hair jutting at several different angles from his pleasinlgy shaped face interrupted as he leaned on the desk in the office of Birthday Productions International (which was true because it served both Canada and upper state New York in a thirty mile diameter service area).

“Shut up. I’m talking. Fake blood all over your suit which means it needs to be dry cleaned which comes from your salary.”

The young man stood, and his eyes glinted at the half bald man with the too tight beige peace symbol T-shirt, and a diamond peace symbol earring in his right ear who was already red faced behind his metal desk.

“In your contracts, you claim to specially clean all your suits before you send us clowns out.  So, a little ketchup should be nothing….if you’re not cheating your customers.”

“Listen you, punk….” The boss stood, and Greg Lewis Stanton popped his own neck sideways and stared very coldly at his ‘superior’ who suddenly remembered that Greg the Clown had a long history at Maya Angelou High School of pranking his teachers with tricks carefully calibrated to be just on the good side of felonies.

“Boss, I quit.  This is garbage and you know it.  And you can find someone else to do the Warnette’s party tonight.”

Greg stomped out, figuring his threat would solve the problem.  Bossy-wossy would back down in a bit with some huffing and puffing.  In the meantime, still clad in his white clown jumpsuit with its black oversized buttons and size thirty-two cowboy boots of electric blue, he punched the vending machine just right, got a free drink, and spun to check the computer in the outer office area for his Facebook, while opening the can with his offhand….

Sprizzzzzz.  Foam and liquid from an overcarbonated can went everywhere, including over the new computer that Greg had been told thrice not to use, not that he listened to Bossy-wossy.

“Great.” Greg muttered considering that he really might be fired this time.  How was he going to become the next great horror director without access to a good clown suit?

And then there was a flash of yellow and white….

This is an outl…

This is an outline by scenes for an urban fantasy novel with a heroic private eye.

Opening scene:

The Lady is walking across the deserted parking lot late at night.  She stops and turns twice as if she hears a sound.  A cat runs out from under another car for one of the sounds, and she laughs a bit shrilly.  No explanation appears for the other sound.

A man runs up to her, hooded, and jacketted and gloved despite the warm spring night outside Dexclo Inc. factory where she is a shiftworker sent home early because she’s feeling ill.  Man grabs her, and controls her, and tells her that he broke into her car earlier and doped her coffee with a nausea inducing drug to get her to leave work early.

At this point, Hero walks out of shadows, and points out the video camera he has running.  Lady yells at him angrily.  He shrugs, and points out that proof that would send Pschyo away for a long time was what she demanded.  No way was Pschyo going to be able to blow this off as a simple misunderstanding, claim he was giving a hug to his girlfriend but he was mistaken.

Pschyo laughs, and Hero pulls heavy pistol.

FIGHT!!  And Pschyo does some things he should definitely not be able to do because Pschyo is a verser.  But in the end, Pschyo and Hero both verse out.

Scene Two:  Hero expects to be seeing angels about now as he was definitely dying. Instead….

 

Hero: He is a big and tall man with twenty pounds overweight.  He works as a private detective.  His preferred clothing is dark, and he wears a felt buttoned up seaman’s jacket, and rubber soled leather shoes broken down at the edges from his weight.

For such a big man, he walks quietly.

Positive: Strong, brave.  Neutral: A loner.  Negative: Does not suffer fools gladly.  When the Lady complains about his battle plans which led her into danger, he is annoyed and says so in a domineering manner.  She wanted to be sure the bad guy got put away.  Thi sis the way to do that.  If she had wanted to be perfectly safe, and be certain of getting the guy, he would have refused the case as impossible.

He lives sparely so as to avoid taking divorce cases which are the bread and butter of p.i. life.

He’s had two unfortunate relationships with woman.  His first wife, fifteen years ago, was a secret drunk, and after getting married, not so secret.  She responded to his efforts to help her, by going wild.  And so one night she came home late from a bar, and doing ninety went over the railing of a bridge, and flipped so that she hit the icy water roof first.

They had no children, and he retreated into work then.

He was still at the time working on divorce and spousal disagreement cases when he took a case from a woman  that her boyfriend was beating her.  He got proof, and showed up to collect him.  After cuffing the beligerrent thug, the girlfriend shot our hero for hurting her ‘boopsy’.  After that, his tendency to only help people who were not idiots was pretty firmly set.

Work hard, take care of your kids, and then you witnessed some thug killing someone….our hero was your man.  Do the right thing, keep your nose clean, and try to keep your sanity together (which our hero knew was a hard job), and someone keeps robbing the little convenience store you own…and our hero was there.  Get drugged up, blow your money at Vegas and the Mob was after you….tough.

 

 

In the Intro Scene….

Villain travels across highly slanted parking lot to Lady who is between two cars.  Hero moves forward with gun out.  Villain throws Lady toward Hero, and Villain dives over back of car to his left with Hero taking a shot at him, and Hero thinks he missed, but he winged Villain.

Hero tells Lady to stay still with hand gesture.  Then uphill car starts tipping, and Hero thinks that he being a very big man might be able to flip, but this is a bigger car.

Now Hero has to scramble forward and drag Lady clear before the car lands on them both.  He does this, and while he’s doing this, the Villain sneaks up behind  and jumps on Hero’s back with a knife that after a bit of struggle goes into Hero’s neck a bit, and then Hero flips him off hard and crashes him upside down into the Lady’s car…which finally sets her alarm shrieking.

The Villain gets up, slow, and smirking.  The Hero does not feel that good.

“I’ve dosed you with a special heartbuster.  You’re going to die now, and I, Phobos am going to enjoy it.”

Phobos is a son of Ares, a demigod (not like the Rick Riordan ones), but not a spiritual being either although he had powers, and he was defeated in a prior universe by Whisp (love casts out fear), and became a verser.  He enjoys causing fear, very much.

Hero decides ‘I may be going to die, but I’m taking Phobos with me’.  Berserk attack.  Both verse out.

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World Two: Haunted House.

Scene Two: Dark bedroom.  Hero expected Heaven, and after getting to his feet in the dark room, he’s terrified that he’s not there.  His fears tell him that he somehow missed Heaven, and therefore he’s in Hell.  But he struggles against this notion, and then goes to pray.

At this point, in a more magical than Earth universe, he receives assurance in the form of Joy and a feeling of ‘Promises will be kept’.  He’s had a few strong spiritual experiences before, but only about three…and this makes four.  Still uncertain, but functional, he gets moving.

He investigates the house, keeping his gun hidden (which he finds quickly in the dark) because he does not want to spook the homeowner, and he has various ghostly experiences until he’s downstairs and finds out that ‘yup, this really is a haunted house, and those are knives floating in the air before me’.

He tries to get the ghost to let him leave, but the ghost calls him ‘Margaruete’ and refuses to let him leave.  Some of the ghost’s story can be seen at this point as he probably killed M to stop her from leaving.

The ghost attacks.  Our hero decides that the universe works in such a way that if he can be attacked then so can the ghost.  The hero grits his teeth (Willpower to learn Arcane magic ) and strikes with an Anger fueled punch that can affect the immaterial.

Eventually, the hero beats the ghost down, and then a la Ghost the movie, Things appear to drag the murderous husband off to his doom.  Our Hero starts to protest for he feels that the soul might still be saved (which is one idea he had tried to get the ghost to accept)….and the Grim Reaper is in the room.

Death shows our Hero the Schedule Book, and it shows that its time for the ghost to go.  And then after the ghost is gone (maybe??????? Some other solution would be better), Death beckons our Hero closer, and full of fear, he comes.  Death shows our Hero his own name, and that the date of death has been crossed out, and replaced with “Immortal: Verser”.  Death then bows to our Hero, and vanishes.

Scene Three: Go out into the suburb, and head downtown to the lights.  Stop in a Waffle House…get food.  Look bewildered at array of items sold in vending machine next to jukebox.  Ask old man if you can borrow a newspaper he’s done with.

Philadelphia New Tribune, May 14 2007!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Skinny bum asks for cash.  Hero gives him a dollar.  Bum says…’this ain’t real money’

Hero tells cook he has no real money, but volunteers him and the bum to wash dishes.  They do, and Hero uses the time to ask a few questions..

 

 

……Not sure about Scene Three.  1&2 are exciting.  But excitement could come from fear and wonder.  Fear from the violence in the newspaper.  Wonder from travelling to a different world and time.

 

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by Tadeusz

Practise Bits: Scenic 3

June 12, 2012 in FictionEdit this entry

Intro scene: PI fights Phobos, pschyopath verser, and they both verse out.

Scene Two: PI arrives in Haunted House World (MJ’s), is reassured of eternal destiny, fights haunt, learns magic, banishes haunt, and reads that his own name has been removed from the Grim Reaper’s Schedule Book.

Note: I’ve heard you’re supposed to make things worse and worse for the player (not to be a total gloomfest).  So I have a new third scene which I think is better or follows the notion of beating the hero to a pulp anyhoo.

Scene Three:  Hero freaks out, and goes screaming into the street.  He’s just thougSt he died, fought a ghost, and met the Reaper.  I’m not sure I’ve written a scene like this, that is, one where the hero is half-nuts.  In this state, he sees a kid throwing a newspaper out of a car, and rather than snag a paper from a driveway, he flags down the car in the pre-dawn darkness.

September 30?………..Hunh!!

2007?!?

He m go of the car, and it screeches off while he collapses whimpering in the street.

Scene Four: The nice men from the local precinct come by and tote him off to the drunk tank.  He gets moved to another cell, and it looks like he’s being charged more heavily.  He wants to know what happened. The guard says nothing, but the other prisoners mention Them.

“You wonder why we don’t drill for oil in Texas?   Or dig for coal in West Virginia? Why we don’t have a permanent moon base?  Its Them.  They move in the shadows, making us dance.”

PI does not take this seriously, but then he sees as he’s being moved some other of his case’s officers.  They are talking out of hearing range to this very strange looking man.  And there is something not right about that man.  His heights is short, and his clothes very expensive, but more than that, he seems waxy skinned, and very very still.

Then he looks at the Hero through several panes of glass and mouths ‘You’re never getting out….alive.”

Later hero finds he’s being charged with the murder of Marguerite Allen, the wife the ghost murderedl.  His fingerprints are in the plac e, and they’ve suddenly found the woman’s skeleton in the back yard.

He’s in despair, and asks for a minister…so they send him th eminister on duty….a priest of the Horned God.  They have a discussion which helps a bit, and then our hero works his way step by step through prayer to find God’s will, and to his surprise to a degree, it is to be rescued.

So he prays, and there is a minor earthquake, and just his prison door opens.  A man is standing outside it, in prison jumpsuit.  The man tells him he needs to leave because if he stays he will surely be killed by a fellow prisoner with a shiv.  A contract is already out on his head.

So he follows the strange man through the prison, past the guard watching TV sports, and to the outer gates of the prison.  Philly Correctional for Men.  There the man says he cannot go further for he is a ghost of an innocent man unjustly executed, and while he could go to Heaven, he asked permission to stay here and help the innocent in the prison.  But he cannot leave the prison.

Realizing he’s just been hanging out with a ghost, even if a good one, our Hero sucks in a deep breath, thanks him, and leaves.

Now he’s a hunted fugitive, and there’s the strange looking man out to get him…..

And there’s the harbor with ice cold water he’s in.

The PI has fought an evil verser, versed out, dealt with a ghost, and been arrested, and then escaped with supernatural help from a prison.  But he is on a small island in Philly harbor, and the water is very cold.

Foreshadow a ferry whistle earlier.

He sees a ferry heading across the harbor, and realizes if he can get 200 feet out into the water, and weight, he could grab onto what he thinks is a rope on the side of the ferry.  Since he can’t swim the harbor, or steal a guarded boat, or wait too long to be discovered, he swims.

And when he gets there, he finds the ‘rope’ is actually a painted bit of gold braid.  Desperate, he realizes that he could freeze to death in the harbor within sight of land and people walking from restauraunt to bars, but out of yelling range.  His first attempt is to shoot the old wooden ferry to create holes, but that does no good as he’s not that steady of a shot (he’s a good shot, but not phenomenal…2@3)

He tries to grab the keel front and hang on, but he’s not strong enough.  He gets pushed under and goes the length of the ferry before sputtering and rising to the service behind the ferry.  Realizing he has no choice, he fires the rest of his pistol’s bullets into the air which attracts attention.

The folk on the ferry demand he drop his pistol, which he does, and he senses it somehow below him, twisting this and that way in the currents.  They take him onboard under rifle guard.  He’s escorted, sopping wet, to a cabin, and is about to be locked in…when….everyone goes still and the Threatener says in tones of silky command.

“I will take care of him from here.  You need not write a report on this or tell this to the authorities as they already know.”

The crew leaves, and he is face to face with the ‘guy’ who mouthed to him that he would never leave the prison alive.

“Well….you are more resourceful than I expected, Mr. PI.”

“Hmmmm.”  They walk.

“Who are you, PI?”

“How about I ask you that question instead?” More walking.

“Alright. But you already know the answer.”

“Vampires are impossible.”

“So is the universe. Its founded on a Miracle or a Singularity, which is really a way of saying the same thing.” The vampire stared at him with deep eyes.  “And now we come to another singularity. The Miracle of Death.”  And PI realizes he’s been walking up out of the ferry to the edge of its railing.  “In ways, I envy you, PI, the door you enter is barred by my own will.  I cannot be what I am, and go where you go…..now Jump!”

The PI fought for a moment, and then realizing his legs were not listening to his will, he grapped up an oar.  The vampire retreated, thinkiing it was a wooden oar, but it was plastic, and the man went overboard with his oar into the icy water.  The vampire watched the cold water for a while, and then turned to look toward his prison where his experiments were going very well indeed.  Unfortunately, he was required to be at a charity for the Mayor tonight, or he would be hard at work at the prison.

The oar helped keep the man afloat a bit, but his fingers were going blue, and he was hallucinating, including some memories of his past (fill in character’s backstory here) and then he has dreams of the Flying Dutchman taking him to shore, and the Captain saying ‘Aye lad, I’d take you on for sure, but you’re already doomed to do your own Dutchman through time and space.”

And he wakes, wet, and desperately cold on the pier, ashore, not sure how he got there.